By Aubrey Belford KYAUKPYU Myanmar (Reuters) - A campaign to isolate Muslims living under apartheid-like conditions is gathering steam in western Myanmar, driven by Buddhist activists emboldened by the country's transition from military rule. Religious violence since 2012 has killed hundreds of Rohingya Muslims and displaced more than 140,000 in Rakhine State. Survivors live as virtual prisoners in camps or in segregated villages, subject to...

Police training officials have called off a local anti-terrorism class for officers after protests from a Muslim civil liberties group called the course's instructor "notorious(ly) anti-Muslim. " Officers from various local departments had been scheduled to attend instructor Sam Kharoba's class, "Islamic Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy," Monday at Lombard Village Hall. But late last week the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic...

Sept 19 (Reuters) - An actress in an anti-Islam film that triggered violent protests across the Muslim world sued a California man linked to the film on Wednesday, accusing him of duping her into appearing in the video she had been led to believe was a desert adventure movie. Actress Cindy Lee Garcia also named Google Inc and its YouTube unit, where the film was posted on the Internet, as defendants in the case, citing invasion of privacy and other ...

Amid protests from a Muslim civil liberties group, local police training officials have called off an anti-terrorism course for officers scheduled for Monday in Lombard that was to have been taught by an instructor the group regards as anti-Muslim. The class was canceled this morning after the head of the agency in charge of police training statewide asked the local training agency, North East Multi-Regional Training, not to use the instructor until the state agency investigates...

KABUL (Reuters) - Afghanistan banned the YouTube website on Wednesday to stop Afghans watching a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad that sparked protests in North Africa and the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya. "We have been told to shut down YouTube to the Afghan public until the video is taken down," Aimal Marjan, general director of Information Technology at the Ministry of Communications, told Reuters. Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the...

By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor PARIS, July 3 (Reuters) - Anti-Muslim attacks and insults have risen steadily in France in recent years as some politicians and media increasingly present Islam as a problem for French society, a Muslim rights group said on Wednesday. Hostility rises when Islam is in the news, for example last year when an Islamist killed seven people or when a politician accused Muslim children of stealing classmates' snacks, the Committee...

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar's government is struggling to contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the streets in the town where the recent trouble started. Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the capital told Reuters on Monday. Communal tension, stifled...

(Reuters) - Malaysia urged Myanmar on Sunday to take stronger action to prevent persecution of Muslims and bring the perpetrators to justice, the latest sign that the inter communal violence is straining ties in Southeast Asia. Thousands of ethnic Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to escape the violence and worsening living conditions, many of them making their way by boat or overland to Muslim-majority Malaysia. Anti-Muslim violence in Buddhist-dominated Myanmar erupted...

EL CAJON, Calif (Reuters) - The murder of an Iraqi-American mother in a close-knit refugee community on the outskirts of San Diego has brought attention to a rise in bias crimes against Muslims, even as police caution against definitively labeling her death a hate crime. Shaima Alawadi, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mother of five, was found brutally beaten in the dining room of her rented home last week by her 17-year-old daughter, police said. She died of her wounds on...

YANGON (Reuters) - The Buddhist extremist movement in Myanmar, known as 969, portrays itself as a grassroots creed. Its chief proponent, a monk named Wirathu, was once jailed by the former military junta for anti-Muslim violence and once called himself the "Burmese bin Laden. " But a Reuters examination traces 969's origins to an official in the dictatorship that once ran Myanmar, and which is the direct predecessor of today's reformist government. The 969...

* Media crews throng to alleged filmmaker's house * L.A. Coptic diocese disavows any association with film * One scene likely filmed at his home * He spent time in prison for bank fraud By Dan Whitcomb CERRITOS, Calif., Sept 13 (Reuters) - Evidence mounted on Thursday that a Los Angeles-area man who served time in prison for bank fraud may have been involved in an anti-Muslim video that stoked violent protests in the Islamic world against the ...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen could face charges over remarks comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the wartime Nazi occupation, after European lawmakers voted to strip her of parliamentary immunity. The French justice ministry asked the European Parliament last year to waive Le Pen's immunity over the comments, made at a rally in 2010 before she took over leadership of the National Front party founded by her father, Jean-Marie. ...

By Jared Ferrie KYAW BOI LAY, Myanmar, May 1 (Reuters) - Hundreds of police and troops restored order in central Myanmar on Wednesday after a fresh outbreak of sectarian violence in which one man was killed after Buddhist mobs trashed property owned by Muslims following a minor street incident. In all, 10 people were injured in Oakkan and nearby villages, just 60 miles (100 km) north of the commercial capital Yangon, and one died of a head wound, the...

MEIKHTILA, Myanmar (Reuters) - Myanmar's government is struggling to contain anti-Muslim violence that touched the outskirts of the capital, Naypyitaw, at the weekend and forced it to send troops to patrol the streets in the town where the recent trouble started. Four houses and a small mosque in Tatkon township on the northern edges of Naypyitaw were set ablaze late on Sunday, a civil servant in the capital told Reuters on Monday. Communal tension, stifled...